There is a guy that wrote wrote an essay some years ago that suggested as much. He posited that drugs like psilocibin basically overload the brain and cause it to form feedback loops. Many of the effects you can experience on hallucinogens also suggest as much. Closed eye visuals for instance are basically the "lights" you see when you push on your eye balls. They are just amplified and put into a feedback loop. Thought loops are common on hallucinogens as well, I imagine its the result of that as well.

vivaoporto writes: Gordon Lyon (better known as Fyodor, author of nmap and maintainer of the internet security resource sites insecure.org, nmap.org, seclists.org, and sectools.org) warns on the nmap development mailing list that the Sourceforge Nmap account was hijacked from him.

To their credit Fyodor states that "So far they seem to be providing just the official Nmap files (as long as you don't click on the fake download buttons) and we haven't caught them trojaning Nmap the way they did with GIMP" but reiterates "that you should only download Nmap from our official SSL Nmap site: https://nmap.org/download.html"Link to Original Source

SourceForge, once a trustworthy source code hosting site, started to place misleading ads (like fake download buttons) a few years ago. They are also bundling third-party adware/malware directly with their Windows installer.

Some project managers decided to leave SourceForge – partly because of this, partly just because there are better options today. SF staff hijacked some of these abandoned accounts, partly to bundle the crapware with their installers. It has become just another sleazy garbage site with downloads of fake antivirus programs and such.

How can I help?

If you agree that SourceForge is in fact distributing malicious software under the guise of open source projects, report them to google. Ideally this will help remove them from search results, prevent others from suffering their malware and provide them with incentive to change their behavior.

An anonymous reader writes: It appears that SourceForge is assuming control of all projects that appear "abandoned." In a blog update on their site, they responded saying in part "There has recently been some report that the GIMP-Win project on SourceForge has been hijacked; this project was actually abandoned over 18 months ago, and SourceForge has stepped-in to keep this project current. "

An anonymous reader writes: Sourceforge staff took over the account of the GIMP-for-Windows maintainer claiming it was abandoned and used this opportunity to wrap the installer in crapware. Quoting Ars:

SourceForge, the code repository site owned by Slashdot Media, has apparently seized control of the account hosting GIMP for Windows on the service, according to e-mails and discussions amongst members of the GIMP community—locking out GIMP's lead Windows developer. And now anyone downloading the Windows version of the open source image editing tool from SourceForge gets the software wrapped in an installer replete with advertisements.

An anonymous reader writes: "SourceForge, the code repository site owned by Slashdot Media, has apparently seized control of the account hosting GIMP for Windows on the service, according to e-mails and discussions amongst members of the GIMP community—locking out GIMP's lead Windows developer. And now anyone downloading the Windows version of the open source image editing tool from SourceForge gets the software wrapped in an installer replete with advertisements."

David Gerard writes: SourceForge has taken over control of the GIMP for Windows SF project and is now distributing an adware/malwared installer for GIMP. They also locked out the maintainer, Jernej Simoni. Sourceforge claims it was "abandoned" and they're providing a service by "mirroring" the original, though it's unclear how much value malware adds for the end user, rather than for SF. (This comes two years after SF claiming its malware was just "misunderstood".) Since being busted, SF is now serving an.exe that matches that at the official download site. Other projects recently hijacked by SF include many Apache projects (Allura, Derby, Directory Studio, the Apache HTTP server, Hadoop, OpenOffice, Solr, and Subversion); Mozilla Firefox, Thunderbird, and FireFTP; Evolution and Open-Xchange; Drupal and WordPress; Eclipse, Aptana, Komodo, MonoDevelop, and NetBeans; VLC, Audacious, Banshee.fm, Helix, and Tomahawk media players; and many others.Link to Original Source

I agree with you on many points but I think technology has been moving in many ways to solve the problems.

On the issue of actual neurons vs ANN, I think issue 1 is probably going to be remedied by advances in memristors. The biggest issue I've seen in most ANNs has been the fact that the entire system is simulated with a single processor having to calculate every neuron, but small bunches of memristors could eventually do this for us and we'll be closer to an actual brain. See: http://phys.org/news/2015-05-b...

The issue of internal biology in neurons is a big unknown though. We know that cell biology has a big affect on cognitive ability. The real question though is how much of an affect it has on the actual processing capabilities. While many people are interested in human level intelligence, I think just being able to reach human level signal processing might bring us half way to where we need to be. In this case, the structure of the neural nets is probably more important than the careful interplay of cellular biology. Given a normal human, we can determine baselines for how different neural structures fire and then mimic those.

Posted
by
samzenpuson Thursday March 26, 2015 @08:25PM
from the to-pay-or-not-to-pay-that-is-the-question dept.

SpzToid sends word that the Ellen Pao vs. Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers discrimination case wrapped up yesterday. No matter what the outcome turns out to be, it has already affected how business is being done in Silicon Valley. "'Even before there's a verdict in this case, and regardless of what the verdict is, people in Silicon Valley are now talking,' said Kelly Dermody, managing partner at Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein, who chairs the San Francisco law firm's employment practice group. 'People are second-guessing and questioning whether there are exclusionary practices [and] everyday subtle acts of exclusion that collectively limit women's ability to succeed or even to compete for the best opportunities. And that's an incredibly positive impact.' Women in tech have long complained about an uneven playing field — lower pay for equal work, being passed over for promotions and a hostile 'brogrammer' culture — and have waited for a catalyst to finally overhaul the status quo. This trial — pitting a disgruntled, multimillionaire former junior partner against a powerful Menlo Park, Calif., venture capital firm — was far from the open-and-shut case that many women had hoped for. More gender discrimination suits against big tech firms are expected to follow; some already have, including lawsuits against Facebook Inc. and Twitter Inc."

Amusingly enough, the toll roads in Japan use a fast access card called ETC. I believe you can get an ETC card that you can charge up somehow, but its difficult to get. Almost every ETC card has to be linked directly to a credit card (I got mine when I signed up with Rakuten for a credit card).

I think the reason has to do with the fact that the express highways in Japan are incredibly expensive. (10-20 mile span of road could cost you $30-50). Going from Osaka to Tokyo via the express highway would cost you about $200 in tolls (no joke!).

I'm not really talking about the card, but the mobile payment systems basically piggy backed off that model.

The Suica phone app for instance, I could link my credit card to it and charge up the "virtual card" on it at any moment. There was also an option to link it to your bank account I think. Edy has a similar service if I remember correctly.

Cards are still in wide use but I think by the time I get back to Japan in 3-5 years; I'll probably be seeing far more people using their phones instead of a card.

I've lived in Japan and used the cellphone payment system. It works quite well now that most places have gotten in line with the correct payment system. A big problem for awhile was that some stores would have one payment system and another wouldn't. The train card linked systems quickly came to dominate though (in Tokyo that was Suica).

The key difference between Japan and the US though, at least from what I've heard, is that in the US they want to tie payments directly to bank accounts or credit cards. In Japan this didn't happen on most payment systems. If you went into a store or paid for a cab with your phone, the money didn't come out of your bank account or credit directly. You would have to charge your electronic payment account with money from your bank account or your credit card first before you could use any money. I like this system because it allowed for a lot better management of funds and avoided potentially using more than you thought you had.

Regardless of what any of the articles say about the decision to do this, I personally believe the reason behind this is because Sony is bleeding money left and right. Sony has been selling off parts of their company for the past year now. It's no secret, Sony has been sinking slowly. They sold their mobile division, they sold their Vaio division, and probably came pretty close to selling their TV division as well, before thinking better of it and simply split it off into a new company. Now they are selling one of their big game studios. If Sony can't find a new market to be successful in, then I wouldn't be surprised to hear about Sony being bought by another company here in the next 3-5 years.

Another angle people need to keep in mind is that Texas is a prime target for a hyperloop in general. Some of the documents put out by the Hyperloop Transportation Technologies group, say that a loop between Dallas, Huston, and Austin would be very profitable. If the test track works then it could entice Texas to let them build a real one.